U.n. Salaries: Do They Help Soviet Spies?

October 12, 1986|By Cox News Service

WASHINGTON — Soviet spying in the United States is being funded in part with American dollars obtained through salary kickbacks from Russians employed by the United Nations Secretariat, according to diplomats, defectors and U.S. intelligence reports.

Those familiar with the kickback scheme say it has been going on for years and also involves U.N. employees from other Eastern Bloc countries.

It is estimated that last year alone these countries received about $20 million in kickbacks. About a quarter of that came from the United States.

It is unclear exactly what proportion of the kickbacks are used for spying, but a Senate Intelligence Committee report prepared last year says ''it is a major subsidy for Soviet diplomatic and intelligence efforts.''

Under the kickback scheme, Soviet and Eastern Bloc nationals employed by the Secretariat -- the organization's vast administrative body -- are paid directly by the United Nations in U.S. dollars. According to numerous accounts, these employees are required to remit their salaries to their respective governments, which then pay them a lesser amount that is typically based on a much lower wage scale used for their diplomats.

Salaries for U.N. Secretariat employees are relatively high due to the above normal cost of living -- especially for housing -- in New York. But many Soviets assigned to the Secretariat reside in a Soviet compound in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, greatly reducing their living expenses.

In addition to salary kickbacks, the CIA and FBI have concluded that Soviet employees who have paid into the U.N.'s pension fund also are required to withdraw their total contributions when they leave their Secretariat jobs. That money is then turned over to their government.

The kickback practices have been ''pretty well confirmed by virtually all of the defectors we have interviewed,'' said Charles Lichenstein, who was U.S. assistant ambassador to the United Nations when he resigned in 1984. ''The FBI has a massive amount of information on this.''

In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar last February, American U.N. Ambassador Vernon Walters termed the kickback scheme ''unacceptable'' and asked him to ''initiate actions to end them.''

But a spokesman for Perez de Cuellar said last week that the secretary- general is powerless to stop the practice.

''We have not acknowledged that the practice exists,'' said spokesman Joe Sills, ''because what happens to the paychecks of the staff members once we issue them is beyond our control.''

If the kickback scheme exists, he continued, ''then this is something that should be a problem between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.''

According to State Department figures for 1985, there were 588 Soviets and Eastern Europeans assigned to the U.N. Secretariat. These employees obtained their jobs through a quota system under which member countries essentially grant their diplomats an extended leave of absence to fill Secretariat positions.